This is McWar

McDonald's played hardball with activists in Britain but got into more trouble than it bargained for

Steve Brooks

Restaurant Business, September 1, 1995

THE OPPOSITION SEEMED NO MIGHTIER than a gnat when McDonald's first hauled two Greenpeace activists into a London court, determined to squash their portrayal of the Golden Arches as a social blight. But more than 14 sometimes embarrassing months later, the chain has discovered just how difficult it can be to control information in the Information Age.

Several times a week, sympathizers around the world are automatically E-mailed updates of McD's libel suit against environmentalists David Morris and Helen Steele, who've treated their audience to a running attack on the fast-food giant. Serving as their own barristers, the pair of unemployed activists have called one McDonald's executive after another to the stand, peppering them with pointed questions about the chain's practices and policies. If that weren't enough to make the chain cringe, the two activists have read extensively from the company's operations manual, airing trade secrets that no corporation would want to share.

The Brits' supporters have been quick to relay the disclosures to consumers in every corner of the world. Those not on the Mclibel Support Campaign's E-mail lists can pull updates from several points on the Internet. The David-and-Goliath battle may have been overlooked by most U.S. papers, but a blow-by-blow is only a few key strokes away.

The show-and-tell has dragged on since June 28, 1994, making it the longest-running libel trial in U.K.'s history, with no end in sight. Critics call it an assault on freedom of speech.

McDonald's U.K. calls it an effort to set the record straight. Whatever the interpretation, here are the facts:

In 1985, as golden arches popped up all over England, London Greenpeace deluged patrons with leaflets titled, "What's wrong with McDonald's." The booklets accused the chain of aiding the destruction of the Brazilian rain forest, undermining the nutrition of children and exploiting youths who work in its restaurants. After five years of enduring the criticism, McDonald's sued for libel.

The burger giant didn't foresee that England's media would have a field day with the case. "Most of the coverage is of the defendants," says Peter Antenen, managing consultant for the Greene Belfield-Smith leisure consulting division of Touche Ross. "The British press is simply making fun of the establishment coming face-to-face with the unorganized. Mac's in a tough position. They don't want to appear to be Goliath chasing David, but they can't allow disinformation to be circulated."

Nor has the case stopped at channel' edge. Protest groups sympathetic to the defendants have multiplied as fast as Happy Meals. The Melibel Support Campaign says the original leaflet has been translated into 20 languages, and groups have passed it out in such far-flung locales as New Zealand. In Israel, 12 supporters chained themselves to a fence on a new unit's opening day.

Fumes the conservative weekly The Economist, "The net effect of the trial has been to publicize charges which the vast majority of McDonald's customers would have dismissed as the ravings of green extremists."

TO DEFENDANTS MORRIS and Steele, the culprit's not just McDonald's, but the entire quick-service sector.

"It's about the food industry as a whole and corporations as a whole," Morris says. "McDonald's was simply one of the pioneers of a type of food, a type of advertising and a type of labor organizing."

"They're the best and they brag about it," says Mike Durschmid, Jr., a Chicago environmentalist. "That's why we're picking on McDonald's more than others."

McDonald's may disagree with everything else the environmentalists say, but it agrees its reputation is at stake, and is spending an estimated $ 1 million to fight back. The corporation hasn't asked for monetary damages, as both defendants are on the dole and have few assets to extract. After 10 years of watching the leaflets circulate, the corporation simply wants critics to put up or shut up.

"If we hadn't believed these allegations were very serious and damaging, we wouldn't have brought the case," says McDonald's U.K. spokesperson Mike Love. "If they go unanswered, people may believe them to be true.

"McDonald's tried to resolve this out of court. Five people were approached. Three agreed the allegations made in the leaflet were untrue and agreed not to repeat them. Two did not. Going to court was a last resort."

Observers say McDonald's is assisted by British libel makes it easier for plaintiffs to prove libel than in the U.S. Where America makes plaintiffs prove malice, Britain places the burden on the defense. Morris and Steele must prove the contested statements are true.

In trying to prove virtually every sentence in the leaflet, Morris and Steele have pulled every aspect of McDonald's microscope, from conditions in stores to advertising aimed at 2-year-old kids. Among the McNuggets they've aired:

• A McDonald's attorney announced the company did not object to describing its product as "junk food."
• An officer admitted that while some stores set out recycling bins for polystyrene packaging, the contents were dumped.
• A meat supplier confirmed McDonald's U.K. had imported five lots of Brazilian beef between 1983 and 1984, while publicly declaring it had forbidden imports.
• A McDonald's cancer expert agreed a statement linking high-fat, low-fiber diets to breast and bowel cancer and heart disease. He was then informed the statement was a direct quote from the Greenpeace fact sheet.

  McDonald's had hoped to confine the whole matter to the U.K. An internal memo leaked to the defendants advises McDonald's Australia to avoid a television interview: "We could worsen the controversy," it said.

  Neither side seems willing to settle the controversy, despite recent meetings, because each side demands the other admit it was wrong all along. With defendants prepared to call as many as 100 former managers and workers to the stand this fall, the case is expected to continue into next spring. Then, both sides will await a final decision from the judge, who ruled early on that the evidence was too complex for a jury trial.

  Morris won't say whether an adverse decision would silence him. But he notes others have passed out 1.5 million leaflets since the suit was first brought, in 1990, and adds, "Nothing can stop these leaflets from being circulated."